


These Visits

by AsterHowl



Category: Ocean's 8 (2018)
Genre: Apartment AU, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-04-11 19:25:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19116166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsterHowl/pseuds/AsterHowl
Summary: Lou comes home one night to see Debbie, her neighbour, slumped, unconscious against her apartment door.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for implied assault.

There’s a woman slumped against her apartment door, head down, legs bent. Lou halts, body and mind, becoming stillness and silence and stares at her. The hallway, its lines and planes, too empty and too narrow, converge on her form as if her dark shape were a cosmic point drawing all reality towards it. 

There’s probably a noise, or some unknowable mechanism of Lou’s mind that had been suspended, the tension mounting, until it snaps back into place, and control returns. She looks quickly over her shoulder, back down the stairwell. Then back at the woman. 

Lou’s steps towards her are cautious. The woman appears to be dressed in attire designed purely to impress upon all nearby that, if they played their cards right, they would see the scant flesh it concealed. The closer Lou gets, the more her features twist. Evidently, someone had been unwilling to play her game. 

Her head is drooped down and to the side but between the long strands of her dark hair Lou can see dried blood on her lip and a colour to her cheek that brings air hissing in through her teeth. A set of keys lies in an open hand by her side. As she leans closer an odour of smoke and booze sends her reeling back, clutching tightly at her nose. 

“Mgh.” Lou seals her lips tight as her guts heave. She holds her breath. Her innards settle. On closer inspection there are patches across the fabric of her skirt and top that suggest dampness. Lou’s eyes narrow incredulously and in concern. “What the fuck happened to you...?”

Lou is holding her keys. They are in her hand long before she ever reaches her front door. She uses them now, and opens the door carefully. The woman slides down it as it retreats from her back until she is lying half in and half out of Lou’s front doorway. 

~

She is a curious and unexpectedly beautiful sight when she emerges from Lou’s bedroom, fingers to her brow, bearing uncertain. Lou watches her from the kitchen table, toast hanging loosely in her fingers. She seems to start at the sight of Lou sitting there, and frowns, backing into and bracing against the wall. 

“Who the...fuck are you?”  
“Name’s Lou.” She sets the toast down on the plate and reaches for her juice.  
The woman just glares at her. “...Well what the fuck are you doing in my home?”  
Lou clucks and shakes her head. This seems to enrage the woman, but she begins taking in her surroundings. “...And where...where’s all my stuff?” There is a youthful quality to the confusion on her features.

“First of all, this is my place.”  
The woman begins to nod slowly. “Okay. That makes more sense.”  
“I found you passed out on my front door. I think you mistook it for your place.” She takes several gulps of her juice and sets the glass back down.  
The woman is nodding still, and grimacing. “Lou, was it?”

Lou takes a bite of her toast and chews.  
The woman takes her lack of objection as confirmation. “You...You live below me.”  
Lou chews and looks down at her plate. Five years she has been living in this building. Five years and this was the most the woman had ever spoken to her.

“I’m the dyke downstairs.”  
The woman tenses her lips.  
Lou appreciates that she doesn’t deny calling her that. “And you’re Deborah.”  
“You’re observant.”  
Lou speaks with her mouth full. “Your partners are loud.”

Now the woman looks sheepish, but it annoys Lou that she doesn’t blush.  
“Friends call me Debbie. Or Deb.”  
Lou gathers her empty plate and glass, glaring at her. Her chair crows against the floorboards as she stands and moves to the kitchen. She puts her dishes in the sink, because it’s something productive and she can turn her back to Debbie. 

“Do you have my clothes?”  
“Bag by the door. They stink. The tags said dry clean only so I just sealed them in a plastic bag.”  
“Oh. Well. Thanks.”

She’s thinking of the previous night, of dragging her into her apartment. Of trying to wake her up. Of negotiating her onto her bed through disoriented protests and meek but frantic yelps. Telling her repeatedly, and in gentle, soft voices that it was okay. Telling her each time she removed another piece of clothing that she was she was safe and that she will give her something warm and dry to wear. Then she could sleep. 

She is thinking of her body. Of the way she tried not to look but did.  
“Hope I wasn’t too much trouble.”  
Lou wipes her hands on a dish cloth and turns to face her. “Think I came out of it alright.”

Debbie’s dark eyes gleam on her delicate, bruised face, because she knows Lou wants to know what happened to her. Debbie tests the sensitivity of the wound with the tip of her tongue.  
“You should see the other guy.”  
“A coroner’s job, surely.”

Debbie blinks and then grins appreciatively but winces at the pain. The ache that seizes Lou’s chest knocks the breath from her lungs. She swallows.  
“Do you want some breakfast? I can make you-”  
“No, that’s okay.”  
“It’s no trouble-”  
“No. Really, it’s fine.”

Lou traps her lower lip between her front upper and lower teeth.  
Debbie looks down at herself. “I’d really like, like...a skirt. Or...” She looks up at Lou and she can feel the woman assessing and formulating a profile of her. “Some pants?”  
Lou narrows her eyes.

The smile on Debbie’s lips is only present on one side of her face. “I’ll get them back to you once I...” She gestures vaguely upwards.  
“Sure. Take what you need from the bedroom.” Lou waves a hand back the way Debbie came.  
Debbie turns, her steps feather light, almost, on her floorboards. Lou thinks that the soles of her feet don’t even touch the ground. There’s a thin layer of ethereal silk between her feet in the ground at all times. She’s still staring where her ankles disappeared back around the corner.

When Debbie re-emerges Lou is just setting her dishes drying on the rack. She didn’t know what she expected to see the woman come out wearing. The pair of bright orange suede trousers makes her choke. Debbie seems pleased at her reaction and strikes a pose, turning and presenting her ass as she runs her hand down her hips. 

“These are stunning.”  
“Forgot I even had those.”  
“Oh yeah? Because...they were the first thing I saw when I opened your closet there.” Even with her swollen, split lip, the smirk on Debbie’s face sends a bolt of lightning straight to Lou’s chest. “Matching jacket in there, too,” Debbie teases, tethering that charge.

“Oh, then, by all means.”  
Debbie is shaking her head. “I’ll get these back to you tomorrow.”  
“Keep ‘em.”  
“No, I can-” The woman’s eyes narrow thoughtfully and then she gives a small, polite bow. “Thank you.”

Lou shrugs and waves her hand dismissively. Then Debbie is gone and Lou releases a long held breath, turns ninety degrees and bonks her head on the fridge.


	2. Chapter 2

They sit around table in the alcove with rain tapping the windows and easy jazz caressing the soul. There’s a growing pot in the middle that Lou wants and she has the cards that could get it for her but she wonders if she has the nerve to match. No one has folded and they can’t all be sitting on winners. 

Amita reaches out to the deck and presents the turn and watches with the focus of a laser for Lou’s reaction.  
“I raise,” Lou says, and adds to the pot.  
“You raise? You’re full of shit,” Amita says.  
Nine Ball brings the front two legs of her chair back down. “I call.”  
“Call.” Tammy eagerly tosses her chips to the pot. 

Amita picks up some of her chips.  
“So I found the woman who lives above me passed out at my front door the other night.”  
There’s a plop and chink as the chips fall into Amita’s vodka. They all stare at Lou, their eyes forming a constellation of curiosity and suspicion.

“You mean Deborah?” Amita lowers her head as though her eyes might be able to pierce through Lou to some concealed truth. “Deborah, Deborah? _The_ Deborah? The Deborah you stalk on facebook and wank to every night? The Deborah who is so hot Tammy cries whenever she sees her?”  
Tammy’s mouth drops open and her cheeks flush pink. “I don’t...cry...”  
Nine Ball lays a hand on Tammy’s forearm. “You do.”  
Tammy makes a flustered chirping noise.  
“Ain’t she a bigot though? Calls you a dyke?” Nine Ball keeps her hand on Tammy’s arm, rubbing affectionately with her thumb.  
“ _That_ Deborah?” Amita says.  
“The same,” Lou says, fanning the two cards in her hand.  
Nine Ball sniffs. “Tha’s fucked up.”  
“She’s...really hot though,” Tammy says. “Like...disgustingly hot.” Tammy’s expression suggests torment and her head tilts empathetically. 

“It’s gross,” Amita says. “It’s actually gross how hot she is.”  
“Vulgar,” Lou nods.  
“So what happened?” Amita asks.  
“She jus’ sayin’ this to distract you,” Nine Ball warns Amita in a sing-song tone. 

“You see right through me,” Lou says to her.  
“Well, it’s working and I don’t care – tell me everything.” Amita looks down at the chips in her drink. She nudges the glass towards the edge of the pot, burns a card from the deck and turns the next one over. 

Lou checks the cards on the table against her own. She has three eights. But with an ace on the table, there’s a chance someone could still have a better hand. She makes a claw with her fingers, picking up a small stack of chips and makes her bet.  
“She’d been roughed up. Her face was a mess.”

“Holy shit.” Amita stares at her again for a long time, then her eyes dip briefly to look at her cards, and then back up at Lou.  
“I raise. Twenny,” Nine Ball says, reaching over from her slumped position in her chair to add to the pot.  
Tammy glares at her and looks at her own depleted pile of chips. As she goes to count out her bet Nine Ball touches her arm again. 

“Babe. Stop. You got nothin’ left.”  
“I will when I take your money.”  
Nine Ball smirks, watching Tammy count out her chips and push them towards the pot. “Ooo, baby, take it, take my money.”  
“I will. I will take all your money,” Tammy says to her, and the two of them inch closer. 

“First of all, no. Unacceptable,” Amita points at them and then waves her finger at them until they sit back at an appropriate distance. “Second, I’m out.” She sets her cards down and leans eagerly towards Lou. “So what did you do?”  
Lou looks at her cards again. Across from her, Tammy is rigid with determination. It doesn’t tell her much. Lou isn’t entirely convinced that her exceptional losing streak isn’t just a cunning strategy. 

“Lou!” Amita gives a bounce on her seat.  
Nine Ball is sitting low in her chair, cards resting on her chest, and meeting Lou’s critical gaze with a raised eyebrow. She’s difficult to read and the longer the game goes on, the less an understanding Lou has of her strategy. It often comes down to her cards and her ability to read the rest of them, Lou included. 

“She said she gave as good as she got,” Lou says.  
“She _said_.” Amita is wide eyed and leaning even more over the table.  
“I took her in. Let her stay the night.”  
Tammy, in the middle of sipping her drink, splutters. Amita slams the table.  
“In your bed?!”

“I slept on the couch.” Lou places a neat pile of chips with the pot. “Raise.”  
“Oh, come on!” Tammy despairs. She looks miserably down at her few remaining chips. But it’s Nine Ball’s turn and she’s already making a pile.  
“You don’t scare me, Miller.”

“Can we focus, here, please?” Amita says.  
Tammy is contemplating what she has on her person that can make up the difference in her chips. If only to keep the game moving so she can hear the rest of Lou’s story, Amita gives her some of her own, and Tammy is smug as she confidently calls the bet Nine Ball just made. 

“I need details.” Amita ignores the incredulous look coming at her from Nine Ball. “Why are you being so blasé about this?”  
Lou is chewing on a response when the door knocks.  
Amita is suddenly poised like a cat ready to pounce. “Oh my god it’s her!”

“Calm down. We were probably just being loud.” Lou places her cards face down on the table as she pushes her chair up. “Don’t let them look at my cards.” She points at Nine Ball and Tammy in turn as she walks backwards towards her front door. As she turns around she hears a hand slam on the table and imagines that Nine Ball tried to peek and Amita firmly prevented it. 

Now that she’s at the front door she does wonder who it could be and has a feeling in her gut that Amita is right. She steps up to the door to peer through the peephole.  
Debbie is standing there with a bottle of wine and Lou feels a sensation like electricity pour down her spine. She takes a moment to gather herself and opens the door, placing her body in the space it creates. 

Debbie is smiling. The bruising on her face has turned terrible shades of mustard yellow and putrid purple and the swelling makes a grotesque mockery of her features but she is smiling and her look of bemusement starts to make Lou self conscious about her posture against the doorframe so she stops leaning. 

“Hi.”  
Lou puffs her bangs from over her eyes. “Hi.”  
“Brought you a thank-you gift.” Debbie holds up the bottle. “It’s wine. Something tells me you’re a woman who’s into harder stuff. But this,” she turns it slightly so that Lou can see the label. “Is a Château Latour ’84. Arguably the best wine this side of a grand.”

Lou’s jaw has already dropped.  
“I...cannot take that from you.” She’s breathless. She wonders if the noise in her ears is the sound of the rain or the precursor to passing out.  
“Well, at the very least I thought I could share it with you,” Debbie says. “And if not you it will be wasted on a man who couldn’t tell his Bordeaux from his Napa Valley and I’d much rather this was opened in appreciation for the way you took care of me than in preparation for the way he’ll fuck me.”

All of this comes out of Debbie’s mouth too matter-of-factly. There are concepts that Lou struggles to connect with the condition of Debbie’s battered face. If she were pressed in that moment to explain how she felt she would have only been able to say that something worried her.  
Lou looks back over her shoulder. When she looks back Debbie is arching an eyebrow.  
“You already have company?”  
Lou huffs at the way Debbie perches up on her tiptoes to try and catch a glimpse.  
“Friends.”  
“As in, more than one?”  
Lou huffs again. “You know, you’re kind of an asshole.”

“Hey now. I’ll have you know I’m a complete asshole.”  
Lou shakes her head. “Give me twenty minutes.”  
“You’ve got ten.”  
“Fifteen.”  
Debbie holds up a finger as she begins to turn. “Uh uh. My terms are final.”  
Lou watches her walk slowly back to the stairs. Her hand reaches for the railing and those dark eyes glance back at her.  
“Asshole, remember?”  
Lou wastes a whole minute watching her go back up the stairs.


	3. Chapter 3

Wine pours from the bottle in the same rhythmic gushing as the blood through Lou’s throbbing heart. She doesn’t know how she manages to keep her glass steady with Debbie’s eyes on her as she tilts and twists the bottle to catch any drops from the neck and brings it towards her own glass. 

Lou watches it fill because every movement and motion Debbie performs is captivating.   
“Cheers.”   
Lou chinks her glass with the one Debbie holds out to her and then they both take a sip.   
“Mmm.” Lou licks her lips. “That’s good.”  
Debbie is nodding and that unspoiled edge of her lips curves upwards. “I know you can do better than that.”

Lou looks at her curled up on the other end of the couch, bare feet tucked gracefully by her side, nails painted dark like her eyes. Like the blouse and skirt that give her slender frame a degree of danger Lou both does and does not want to test. She considers for a moment.   
“Stirring.”

“Stirring,” Debbie repeats, infusing the word with the very quality it describes and making Lou swallow hard. “Good word. Very apt. Bet you’re good at scrabble.”  
“You make a lot of judgements about me based on very little.” Lou takes a sip of the wine and then holds it low in her hands. She has tucked herself right into the corner of the couch, one knee up against the cushion, her other foot on the floor. 

Debbie hums. “I don’t think you realize how much you communicate.”  
Lou presses her lips firmly together as if to challenge the notion.   
“The way you dress, for example.”  
“Like a dyke?”   
Debbie releases an amused breath. “It’s meticulous. Deliberate. You put an outfit together the way a poet selects the perfect words, the way a composer takes care to find the most _stirring_ notes.”

“You think so?”  
“The way you dress sends a message. You want people to read you.”  
Lou laughs nervously behind her fingers. She has to look across the room, over the back of the couch, just to avoid the way Debbie is looking at her. 

“Okay,” Lou says. She takes another sip of wine and then asks, “What does the message say?”  
“Oh,” Debbie says, her lips hovering by the rim of her glass. “It can be quite confronting to hear your own message spoken back to you.”  
Lou laughs through her teeth. “Sure.”

Debbie looks into her wine and her hand makes subtle movements, swirling it, drawing Lou’s attention like a moth to a flame, and the guard she keeps trying to build crumbles away once more. When Debbie looks up at her Lou holds her breath.  
“It says...I’m loyal. To a fault. It says, if you need me you know where to find me.”

The way Debbie’s fingers are shaped around the wine glass mimics the clutching sensation Lou feels around her heart.   
“It says,” Debbie lowers her tone, “Don’t hurt me.”  
Lou coughs to clear her throat. “About as accurate as a horoscope.” She takes a gulp of wine to burn away the lump growing there.

Debbie shrugs. “You’re easily manipulated. You know this about yourself so you construct this persona you think is intimidating and warns people not to waste your time.”  
“Oh really?”  
“You’re the one who threw her friends out of her apartment to spend time with the homophobic bitch upstairs who calls you a dyke.” Debbie takes a graceful sip to accentuate her point. “Just because I told you to.”

Lou clenches her jaw.  
“Is it how you dreamed it would go?” she hears Debbie ask her.   
Lou grimaces and shakes her head.   
“What message do you think my clothes send?” Debbie adjusts her posture obligingly. 

“It says...” Lou takes in the shades, the details, the hidden silver threads that flash when the light hits them just so. “I’ll hurt you.”  
Debbie smirks and nods slowly. “We make quite the tragic couple.”  
“We don’t make anything.”  
“But you’d like us to.”

Debbie is sitting so comfortably, so at ease, as if their conversation were about the weather. Lou opens her mouth, intending to deny it, but her voice fails.   
Debbie prompts her again. “You’d like us to, even though I’m horrible to you.”  
Lou just shrugs. “You’re very attractive.”  
The tip of Debbie’s tongue pokes between her cracked, swollen lips. “Is that all it is?”

Lou feels uneasy at her tone.   
“Even now?” Debbie asks. She reaches up with her fingers and sweeps her hair from over the marks on her face. “You find me attractive?”  
She takes the time to regard her. The terrible bruising on her face is so much worse today than it was the other night. She realizes it’s not the right word. She can do better.

“I find you beautiful.”  
Debbie licks her lips again and then looks into her wine. “Same meaning. Different connotations.”  
Lou lets out a silent breath in relief and then finds Debbie smirking at her.   
“How did it happen?” Lou asks, running the nail of her thumb across her glass. 

“Diving straight in,” Debbie notes.   
“You don’t have to tell me.”  
“I’ll tell you.” Debbie repositions herself, reaching for her toes and tucking her legs closer. “I was at my boyfriend’s art gallery. He was launching a new exhibition. Big function.”  
Lou sips her wine, dreading the details. 

“I got talking to this woman. She was admiring a painting and I said I would buy it for her.”  
Lou’s eyebrows shoot upwards. “How much?”  
“What amount would be both believable and sufficiently shocking?”  
Lou ponders. “At least fifteen hundred.”  
“Then that’s how much.”  
Lou chirps in amusement. 

“She seemed keen, so, I invited her back to my boyfriend’s place for the night.”  
Lou blinks. Debbie’s eyes glint, pleased at her reaction.  
“Then...her husband showed up. He was less keen.” Debbie pauses to sip her wine. “Anyway, my boyfriend blamed me for ruining his launch. I took a bunch of pain killers and he drove me home. Dropped me off. You know the rest.”

They are silent as they finish off their wine.  
“You do that often?” Lou asks finally.  
“What?”  
“Invite women back with you and your boyfriend.”  
Debbie hums. “You wondering why I’ve never invited you?”

“I certainly don’t have a husband ready to deck you one if you did.”  
Debbie cradles her empty wine glass in her fingers. “You aren’t his type.”  
Lou narrows her eyes, waiting for an explanation. Debbie’s expression sobers unexpectedly.  
“...He’s not interested in watching, Lou.”

She tries to find the words in her that would express her willingness to participate in whatever her boyfriend _was_ interested in. But she doesn’t have any. She would never have any. And the way Debbie is looking at her now, she knows that too.   
“Then I guess I should thank you for sparing me,” Lou says.  
“Oh you’re welcome,” Debbie grins.


	4. Chapter 4

Tammy’s jaw has been hanging for at least ten solid seconds before she says, “Are you kidding?”  
“They do it all the time, apparently.”  
Tammy is reclined on the sofa, and Lou is tucked, cross legged at the other end, kneading her thumbs into the impossibly soft soles of her best friend’s foot.

“They just...invite strange women to bed with them?”  
“Depends on your definition of strange.”  
“I don’t know that I could do that.”  
“Well, no. You can barely ask Nine Ball to bed with you.”  
Tammy cocks her head and thins her lips. “It’s a little hard when you’ve got a husband and two kids.”  
“Your husband might be into it.”

Tammy sips from her wine and gazes doubtfully to her lap. The fingers of her empty hand pick at the fabric of her blouse and twist a button.  
Lou begins rubbing gently around the pads of the balls of her feet. “She’s not going to pressure you, Tammy.”  
“She deserves better.”  
“Who’s better than you?”

Tammy clucks a pitiful laugh. Her head rolls back to give Lou a shameful smile. “They both deserve better than me.”  
Lou lifts Tammy’s foot up to plant her lips against her toes.  
Tammy laughs softly. “Charming.”  
Lou kisses her toes again, softer, with a tenderness that renders a pink blush on Tammy’s cheeks and makes her giggle. 

“Why are you still so good to me?” she asks after a while.  
“You’re paying me to do this,” Lou reminds her, pausing briefly to point at the foot on her lap.  
Tammy just looks at her. “I stole your girlfriend.”  
“And without setting off any alarms. Quite the heist you pulled.”  
Tammy tugs her foot away and kicks her playfully in the knee. “I’m serious.”

“So am I. It was very impressive.”  
Tammy just shakes her head, a sadness weighing on the edge of her smile. “I know I hurt you.”  
Lou continues to rub her foot. “Not intentionally.”  
“Can you really make that distinction? Honestly?”  
“Tammy. You don’t have a malicious bone in your body.” Lou pauses to reflect on the way a crack formed on her heart and the one person she depended on for healing was the one who inflicted it. “And I’d been sensing Nine Ball’s restlessness for a while. She wanted more from me and I wasn’t giving her that. I didn’t know how to give her that. You made her smile. You made her laugh. You made her happy and honestly, Tammy, I was relieved.”

“Can I ask you something then?”  
Lou presses her thumbs firmly into the arch of Tammy’s foot. “Go on.”  
“Why couldn’t you give her more? What was the problem?”  
Lou sucks in and bites both her lips. Tammy peers curiously at her from across the couch and only when Lou’s gaze drifts upward does the woman connect the dots.  
“Ah,” she says. “The distraction.”

“I was a terrible girlfriend. Nine Ball deserved better when she was with me. You’re her better.”  
“Well, no shit. You keep calling her Nine Ball for a start. Did you ever just call her Leslie?”  
“Not once.”  
Tammy snorts. “The whole time?”  
“She hated it. The reason I knew she’d fallen for you was because you were the only one she consented to call her Leslie.” Lou smacks her lips and puffs like her mouth is full of cotton. “See? It just sounds wrong coming from me.”

“I still wish I could give her more,” Tammy says quietly.  
“You can’t blame yourself for discovering a piece of who you are years after thinking you had your identity all figured out. Nine Ball doesn’t blame you either.”  
“I’m cheating on my husband. On my family.”  
“Way I see it, you could only be cheating if you knew you were gay going into the marriage.”  
“Part of me always knew...”  
“That’s hindsight. You didn’t know at the time. It only makes sense now looking back.”

Tammy takes a sip of her wine and sighs tragically. “I had such a crush on you.”  
“Naturally.”  
Tammy kicks her again. “Such an ass. Why didn’t you tell me?”  
“What, that you were gay?”  
“A heads up would have been nice.”  
Lou reaches for the bottle of lavender oil on the coffee table and shakes some onto her hand.  
“Would you have listened?” Placing the little bottle back down she rubs her hands together and begins to work on the other foot.  
Tammy pouts. “No. Probably not. Why’d you let me get married, though?”

“It’s what you wanted.”  
“I wanted a family. I wanted a life full of comfort and love.”  
“And in no insignificant way, the things we want at the time define who we are. When we don’t have all the information we can only work with what we have.”  
“Fuck, Lou. You a philosopher now?”

Lou shrugs. “You just need time to figure it out. Like I always tell you, you’ve got me. You’ve got us. You need to leave him, you know where you can go. I can convert the studio into a kid’s room.” She can see Tammy’s lip beginning to quiver with emotion and she gives her foot a firm squeeze. “You’re not gonna fuck up and you’re never gonna be left alone. I won’t let that happen.”

Tammy sniffs and lets out a shaking breath. But she gasps and flinches when there’s a knock at the door. Lou gives Tammy’s foot a pat as she lifts her leg and tucks it aside so she can roll off the couch.  
“Is that her? Again?” Tammy asks incredulous.  
“I dunno, Tam. Shall I answer the door and find out?” But she already knows it is. She can sense it. Maybe she detects the subtle particularities of the way her knuckles rap on the door, the rhythm of it, the position. Maybe she can smell her. Maybe it is magnetism or some other profound metaphysical force to which Lou is so attuned that she knows without opening the door that Debbie is on the other side. 

So she has already trained her features into an arrangement suggesting that she’s nonchalant about the visit when she pulls it open. She puts the whole length of her body in the gap.  
She is drawn to the bright orange suede pants Debbie is wearing, somehow made the understated accent of a soft brown cardigan coat and dark teal silk blouse ensemble.  
Lou isn’t sure for how long she stares at the way the woman has tamed one of the loudest items in her closet but she finds herself saying, “Hello again.”  
Debbie tries to peer around her. “You got company?”  
“Just a friend.”  
“Just a _friend_? Or just a friend?”

Lou sticks the tip of her tongue behind her front teeth. The woman is relentless.  
“Are you that determined to catch some hot girl on girl action?” She asks.  
“I’m an opportunist.” Debbie perches up on her toes again but Lou, instinctively, does the same. “Do I smell essential oils?”  
“What are you, a bloodhound?” Lou brings her hands behind her to wipe them on her pants.  
Debbie hums. “Nothing so wholesome. Are you going to introduce me to your friend?” 

“Are you going to be nice?”  
“Best behaviour,” she promises with a whisper and a wink.  
Lou steps back to let her in. Debbie crosses the threshold with her hands clasped neatly in front of her. Tammy has come around the couch and is standing to attention. 

“Debbie, this is Tammy,” Lou says, indicating with a stretched out arm.  
“Pleasure.” Debbie extends her hand.  
Tammy takes it but is distracted. “Are those Lou’s pants?”  
“They’ve proven useful in drawing attention away from the face,” Debbie explains with the expositional tilt of her head.  
“Yep. They’ll do that,” Tammy nods.

“So what are you ladies up to?” Debbie asks.  
“Tammy dispossessed me of an easy three hundred playing poker the other night.” Lou leans her hip against her kitchen counter and folds her arms. “She’s letting me earn it back by rubbing her feet.”  
Debbie looks at the woman wearing baggy ankle grazer jeans and fuzzy woollen jumper. Lou thinks she is calculating the woman’s potential. It makes her uncomfortable.

“We were...done, though.” Tammy picks up her hand bag from the kitchen counter and pulls it up on her shoulder. “I should go.”  
Debbie gets in front of her. “How well do you know, Lou?”  
Tammy stammers at the unexpected question. “Uh...p-pretty well? I’m her best friend, so...” 

Lou frowns, wondering what Debbie is up to.  
“Then you should stay, and tell me everything you know about her.”  
“Why, are you her biographer?” Tammy quips.  
Debbie smirks. She walks past her, half turning to catch Lou’s eye. “I like her.”

Lou shares a look with Tammy, but can only shrug apologetically. She watches Debbie makes her way to a cabinet where a bottle of vodka is sitting on the counter. She grabs a stack of glasses with one and with the other, grabs the bottle by the neck and wiggles it. “Let’s get started.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you suddenly worried this might turn into an Lou/Debbie/Tammy situation, rest assured I have absolutely **no** intention of doing that here. But damn I need to write myself some Lou/Nine Ball soon or I will wither and die. I will actually shrivel and be blown to dust on the wind. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone leaving kudos and comments. You are beautiful, special people.


	5. Chapter 5

Lou pulls her bedroom door closed and returns to her living room.  
“She said a lot,” Debbie says. She is sitting languidly at the end of the couch.  
“She drank a lot.” Lou reclaims her spot at the other end, feeling Debbie’s eyes on her. The rain has started again, giving a texture to the music playing softly from her surround system that Lou can feel pushing her closer to the other woman.  
“Won’t her husband worry?” Debbie asks, after taking the tiniest sip of the glass of vodka she has nursed all night. 

“I texted him an hour ago.”  
Debbie doesn’t look satisfied with the answer.  
“What?” Lou asks.  
“He doesn’t get jealous?”  
“That I get to deal with all the puking?”  
Debbie smirks.  
Lou shakes her head. “It would never occur to him.”  
“I’ve known Tammy for,” she checks her watch and sighs, “Five hours? I would never have guessed she was straight.”

“Yeah, well. You’ve always had that affect on her.”  
Debbie’s eyes come alight. “Have I?”  
“We give her shit for it. But yes.”  
Debbie twists the glass in her fingers, a demure tilt to her head. “Didn’t realize I featured so prominently in your lives.”

Lou feels her breath catch. She picks up her glass and sips from it, but there isn’t enough in it. She busies herself pouring a refill as Debbie’s gaze burns through her clothing.  
“He doesn’t know,” Lou says, thinking she should explain on Tammy’s behalf. “She came to this realization after she married him. Years after. If you intend to feature more in our lives, please don’t out her.”

Debbie gives a solemn nod. A moment later, after a silence, Lou catches her smiling at her, and she doesn’t notice the violence that has marked her face.  
“What?”  
“So you’re still friends with your ex.”  
It’s not a question, and Lou doesn’t know how to respond to it.  
“And best friends with the woman who stole your girlfriend.”  
Lou remains silent. 

Debbie shakes her head. “Loyal to a fault.”  
“That’s your opinion based on your values.”  
Debbie’s eyebrows lift slowly. “That is a flawless response.”  
“Thank you.” Lou takes a heavy sip of her drink and rests the glass on her lap. 

“So a neurosurgeon.” Debbie gives her an extended look over the rim of her glass as she lets the vodka collect on her tongue. “Guess I was in very good hands.”  
“Former. I just teach now.”  
“Right. Because of the accident.”

Lou holds up and flexes her right hand. Her fingers stall.  
“Do you miss it?” Debbie asks softly.  
Lou shakes her head. “Most surgeons at that level, it’s their life. The sacrifices they made to get there, the relationships they burned along the way, all the work and the risks, it all has to mean it defines them completely. They’d be lost without it.”

“But not you?”  
“I get more satisfaction helping the students.”  
“I bet you’re an inspirational teacher.”  
Lou huffs.  
“Sexy, too.”

“I don’t fuck my students.” Lou is surprised at the anger behind her own voice. But more surprised at the way Debbie just smiles.  
“Won’t stop them fantasizing about you.”  
Lou is unsure what to do with that insight. 

“The way you fantasize about me.”  
Lou scoffs and rolls her eyes.  
“I don’t hear a denial.”  
Lou holds her gaze. “What are your intentions here? What is this? Because it seems an awful lot like...”

Debbie’s eyebrows raise slowly. “Seduction?”  
Lou seals her lips tight and huffs irritably through her nose.  
Debbie is looking at her. “Well of course it is.”  
Lou’s heart trips in her chest cavity.  
Debbie looks down at her vodka, barely touched, and begins to swirl the liquid. “But it’s complicated. And I’m not exactly at my best right now.”

Lou wants to tell her that the marks on her face don’t in any way diminish her beauty, but she stays her voice. Because she realizes, in the moment of silence she forces herself to take, that her own feelings are irrelevant. Debbie is telling her she doesn’t feel comfortable. She is struck by the admission. 

“I don’t want to hurt you, Lou.” The sharp edge to her eyes have softened. “If anything were to happen...right now...you will get hurt.”  
Lou tries to suppress a shiver but knows that Debbie sees it happen. She looks down at her lap. Her mouth is dry and she has to take a sip of vodka but the burn doesn’t help either and her voice rasps softly.  
“...When?”

Debbie smiles sadly. “Maybe not for a long time.”  
Lou doesn’t look up from her lap. “Well...You know where to find me.”  
Lou feels the weight shifting on the couch, hears the sound of a glass setting on the coffee table. She’s aware of Debbie standing and in her peripheral vision, sees her legs coming towards her. That, alone, makes her look up. 

Debbie is already leaning down. Lou is frozen to the spot. Debbie’s hand cups her face and Lou is contained entirely within dark brown eyes. A thumb brushes her cheekbone. Lou doesn’t breathe. The fingers slip down her cheek, taking her chin and turning her head just slightly and Lou feels lips touch softly to her cheek.

She is still sitting there long after Debbie has let herself out. A wailing moan comes from her bedroom and Lou realizes there are half dried tears on her face. With a frustrated sniff she quickly wipes her face and hurries to her bedroom. She finds Tammy in the en-suite clinging to the toilet basin. She leaps in quickly to gather her hair as the poor woman expels everything that Debbie Ocean poured into her.

Lou strokes her back up and down. “Shhh, it’s okay.”  
Tammy sobs. She thinks she’s dying. She thinks she’s dying and she’s sorry for everything.  
“You’re not dying and you have nothing to be sorry for.”  
Tammy hurls again and begins shaking with exertion. Lou holds her, rubbing her back in firm, long strokes up and down her spine. 

Tammy’s face is red and glistens with sweat and tears. “I’ve ruined your night.”  
“You _are_ my night.”  
“But...Debbie...”  
Lou sweeps her hand across her brow, picking strands stuck to her skin. “No Debbie. Just you.”  
Tammy is so disoriented she cries more. Lou aches for her. They stay a while longer in the bathroom, even when Tammy’s guts seem to settle. 

Lou helps her to stand, because she’s so drained her muscles can’t support her, and walks her back to the bed. Then she goes back to clean the bathroom.  
“I’m sorry,” Tammy says when she returns.  
Lou simply undresses, throwing on a shirt for the sake of modesty. Then she crawls into bed and begins tracing gentle patterns on Tammy’s face. 

“Debbie left?” The woman’s voice cracks in her throat raw from vomiting.  
“Ages ago.” Lou catches silent a tear on the tip of her finger that escapes the woman’s eye.  
“Because of me?”  
“Oh I think she would stay for you,” Lou gives her a smirk.  
Tammy blushes hard and bites her lip.

Lou chuckles and continues to draw lines around her features. “But I wouldn’t let her.”  
Tammy gives a weak chirp. “You’re teasing me...  
Lou nods. “I’m teasing you.”  
“Asshole.”  
“You can let me have it in the morning.” Lou strokes her hair and gently boops her nose. “Go to sleep.”  
Tammy breathes in and it comes trembling back out of her lungs as her eyes drift close, and Lou tries not to think about Debbie fucking her senseless on the couch.


End file.
